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Another thing about that shirt

As has been commented on byothers, feminists’ reaction to space scientist’s Matt Taylor’s ugly shirt is hysterical and hysterical. If you aren’t a feminist, you might regard that shirt as tasteless, or ugly, or inappropriate attire for an office, but you wouldn’t clamor for the quasi-Maoist forced apology Taylor later gave.

Here’s the truth: that shirt is tasteless, and no man would be allowed to wear a shirt like that at any office with a mature HR department, an office of diversity and inclusion, or even with a non-negligible proportion of women. It’s obvious that Taylor’s workplace has hardly any dress code.

This is evidence that the European Space Agency tolerates nonconformity in its scientists. If an employer allows such deviations from the usual progressive norms, it probably allows its workers to speak their mind in all matters scientific as well. They are, indeed, welcoming to those who are different.

Heretofore the European Space Agency has avoided the gaze of the progressive conformity police, but those days are almost certainly over. Now they, like NASA, will make sure their primary mission is no longer scientific progress, but mere progress. And those who think differently will be purged or silenced.

Can a scientific agency accomplish anything without allowing its scientists to think freely?

Like IBM and Kodak and Google and FEMA and the CDC, the organization will retain only marginal competence in completing its original mission. It will continue to exist as a place for 2nd tier engineers, scientists, and lots of bureaucrats to spend their weekdays.